Caucus-night vote-swapping could tilt Iowa

DES MOINES -- For the first time in decades, a quirk in the Iowa nominating contest on Jan. 19 -- vote-swapping on caucus night -- could determine the outcome of the Democratic presidential contest here, according to advisers for several campaigns who are mapping strategies to swing stray votes in the final hours.

With candidates required to win at least 15 percent of the voters in each precinct to survive, strategists assume a number of candidates will fall short -- freeing their caucus voters to support other campaigns.

Several campaigns are developing ways to swing support in some of the 1,990 precincts on caucus night -- to benefit their own candidate or to hurt someone else.

At headquarters for Howard Dean, advisers are working on an automated system that would let precinct captains dial in early tallies. Knowing how Dean is faring statewide would allow the campaign to advise its supporters to throw Dean votes in some precincts to another candidate.

Where the supporters of the low-performing candidates wind up, and whether the leading candidates have spare delegates to throw to other campaigns, depends entirely on how the numbers break in the first round of voting.

Dean voters, for instance, could be directed to shift to Senator John F. Kerry as part of a strategy to knock Richard A. Gephardt out of contention and create a more competitive race in New Hampshire.

Retired Army General Wesley K. Clark has surged in the New Hampshire primary, according to recent polls, and Dean advisers believe he would present a formidable challenge to Dean in the Southern contests that follow.

"It's fair to say every campaign is going to have a strategy for caucus night" of how to manipulate votes once an early tally has taken place, said Rob Berntsen, the Iowa caucus director for Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "It's going to be a very, very important period. . . . We've got to be prepared."

The unique structure of the caucuses makes this gamesmanship possible: On caucus night, voters gather at a precinct site and separate into groups by candidate. Groups that do not reach 15 percent either must persuade other voters to join in to swell their ranks, or are disbanded.

This leads to an intense period of horse-trading, where majority groups target less popular ones and undecided voters, offering incentives, such as a delegate position at the convention or a role in shaping the party platform in exchange for a loyalty switch.

Darrell Lewis, 51, a precinct captain for Dean in Clear Lake, has preparations underway. An experienced caucusgoer who once switched candidates, Lewis said he has appealed to supporters of Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Al Sharpton, and Edwards. Lewis expects some of them may not reach 15 percent in his north-central precinct. "It's going to have a lot of influence, wherever these people end up," he said.

Democrats and political strategists across the spectrum agree: Not since 1988, or perhaps even earlier, has the unique caucus format made the race so unpredictable.

Advisers expect the media-run entrance polls, conducted at entrances to caucus sites, to be nearly as meaningless as the public polls that are conducted in the days beforehand, because of the large number of undecided voters, the quirky nature of the caucuses, and the role that vote-swapping could play.

Secretary of State Chet Culver of Iowa, a Democrat, said the people who support the so-called "nonviable" candidates "could suddenly become the power brokers" in this election cycle, because so many contenders are in the running and support is so evenly split.

Under the complicated caucus formula, a candidate who gets 15 out of 100 voters in a precinct would earn a delegate. With 14, just one voter less, the candidate would not get any delegates.

"The stakes are so high, especially for the top four candidates, that it could come down to a few delegates in each of the precincts," Culver said.

According to internal Iowa polling conducted by the campaigns, Dean is in the lead, closely followed by Gephardt of Missouri. Kerry is said to be in third place, while Edwards is a close fourth. The remaining candidates are in single digits.

Advisers to every campaign say the race is essentially too close to call.

Each contender has his own edge: Gephardt started out in politics as a precinct captain in St. Louis, going on to win the Iowa caucuses during his 1988 presidential bid.

Dean has declared that he will bring in tens of thousands of new voters, potentially tipping the scales his way as his backers flood each precinct. Strategists say Kerry and Edwards could surge in the final week and a half.

If the Dean campaign does put into effect an automated phone system, his strategists will be able to assess their standing much earlier than usual. They could then call supporters around the state and tell them how to influence who comes in second and third, potentially determining who has enough momentum to move on to the next contest.

The best scenario for Dean is for Kerry to have a second-place showing in Iowa, which would knock Gephardt down to third. Kerry, having exceeded expectations in Iowa, could sweep into New Hampshire with fresh buzz -- enough to blunt the effectiveness of Clark, Dean aides hope, but not enough to come in first place on Jan. 27.

Still, veteran operatives are skeptical that anyone can organize voters that quickly or persuade diehard supporters of any campaign to switch. "The mythology of coordination is ridiculous," Gephardt adviser Bill Carrick said. Dennis Goldford, chairman of the politics department at Drake University in Des Moines, said coordinating votes would make sense "in a strictly tactical sense."

"Now, would [voters] actually do it?" Goldford said. "And are people really willing to be that Machiavellian, your average person? I don't know."